Historically, flight assignments by major commercial airlines have been made on the basis of a bidding procedure. Typically, this has been done on a monthly basis. This bidding process involves the publication by the airline of various "bid lines" typically consisting of a sequence of flights to various destinations, the necessary airport layovers, etc. The information related to such bid lines typically includes such additional information as pay credit hours, flight times, airport arrival and departure times, etc. A month's scheduling for a major commercial airline may involve hundreds of such bid lines, constituting the entire flight program for the month for that airline.
In the bidding process, the various flight personnel, pilots, co-pilots, engineers, flight attendants etc. submit bids for selected bid lines of their choice. The flight assignments are then made by the airline on a seniority basis, with flight personnel of greatest seniority receiving first preference in the bidding process.
Particularly for flight personnel of lower seniority, desired bid lines may not be available because of previous assignment to personnel of higher seniority status. Accordingly, it is customary to submit numerous bid line selections, so that if primary selections are not available, secondary selections can be assigned.
As can be readily appreciated, the analysis of hundreds of bid lines can be an extraordinarily tedious and time consuming task, because of the wealth of information contained in the bid line publication, and the numerous combinations and permutations of the relevant data.
The present invention is directed to a novel system and procedure for effecting computer analysis of bid line publications and, based upon previously submitted selections of flight criteria, prioritized according to individual flight personnel preferences. The system and procedure issues, as its output, a customized, prioritized list of bid line selections tailored specifically to the indicated desires of a flight employee. This output may be utilized by the employee to make final bid selections, or may itself constitute the bid submission, if desired.
A significant aspect of the procedure of the invention is the establishment of an employee data record, for each subscribing employee, indicating the subscriber's preferences with respect to each of several predefined bid selection criteria, and the order of importance, to that individual subscriber, of such individual bid selection criteria. These preferences and priorities may be routinely changed by the subscriber. In addition, the subscriber may maintain on file, in the computer data bank, a default record of preferences and priorities, which may be utilized for any period in which the subscriber does not submit updated selections.
Pursuant to the invention, upon publication of the bid line selections by an airline for a monthly or other period observed by the airline, each of the bid lines is subjected to computer analysis against each of the preferences and priorities currently on record for a given employee. As part of the analysis, when a particular bid line is found to satisfy a criteria selection made by an employee, a selection value is assigned to that bid line, and that value is in turn adjusted by a priority factor indicated by the employee's flight selection criteria. In this way, a bid line meeting a first priority selection of the employee is assigned a greater value than one meeting a lower priority preference. A single bid line, moreover, may satisfy more than one of the indicated preferences, and the cumulative selection value for such bid line is thus increased by the adjusted or weighted value of the additional preference(s) met by the bid line.
Pursuant to the system of the invention, each and every published bid line is subjected to such analysis, for each subscribing employee. For each such subscriber, the published bid lines, as analyzed and evaluated, are sorted according to the total values assigned thereto representing adjusted or weighted subscriber preferences met by such a bid line. An output is thereupon generated, which consists of a predetermined number of recommended bids, with the first such recommended bid representing a bid line incorporating the maximum preference selections of the employee adjusted in each case for the priority indicated by the subscriber. This output can be in the form of a printed card, an electronic transmission to the airline or the like.
In one of its most advantageous forms, the procedure of the invention is adapted to accept input from individual employee subscribers via touch tone telephone. For touch tone data input, the system is constructed to provide a computer-generated voice response to the touch tone input, so that the accuracy of the data input is immediately confirmed to the user by voice response. The voice response may be in the form of simply repeating the numerals tapped in by the subscriber on the touch tone device, or, in a more comprehensive system, issuing a voice message constituting the effect of the coded information input by touch tone.
Additionally, the process of the invention is equally adaptable to the inputting of subscriber selection information via a standard home personal computer or by a simple, low cost "dumb" terminal, which the subscriber may obtain. For personal computer or dumb terminal input, it may be advantageous to utilize a commercial database service such as Compuserve or The Source to provide a convenient interface between the employee terminal and the data processing terminal. The use of a computer terminal by the subscriber admits of visual observation of data entry and visual response by the host computer, as will be understood, but is otherwise substantively the same as the coded input from the touch tone telephone.
The process and system of the invention result in enormous time savings to the individual airline employees using the system. In addition, because the computer of course has the ability to fully analyze each of the hundreds of published bid lines against each of the subscriber's selection criteria, the bid line selections outputted from the system likely will better reflect the employee's real preferences, than would a manual selection process.
For a more complete understanding of the above and other features and advantages of the invention, reference should be made to the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment of the invention, and to the accompanying drawing.